HOLY SEE ADDRESSES FORUM ON POPULATION, DEVELOPMENT

VATICAN CITY, FEB 10, 1999 (VIS) - A Holy See delegation is participating in an international forum on population and development, now underway in the Hague, in preparation for the special meeting this summer at the United Nations, five years after the U.N. population conference in Cairo. The five-day meeting ends February 12.

Head of delegation Msgr. Frank Dewane of the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum" spoke today at the forum's plenary session.

He recalled that at the 1994 Cairo population conference, "for the first time the linkage between population and development was the focus of consideration. All forms of coercion in the implementation of population policies were rejected. The family was recognized as the fundamental unit of society based on marriage and entitled to comprehensive support and protection."

"In the follow-up process," he went on, "the Holy See calls for a priority treatment of issues regarding development and insists on two important components: education and the reduction of poverty. However, the disproportion between the funds allocated for reproductive health and those allocated for the elimination of widespread endemic disease or for education is noted."

Msgr. Dewane stated that "the role of the family ... is strongly reaffirmed by the Holy See," as is its rejection of "an individualistic concept of sexuality." He also reiterated that it is the parents who have the primary responsibility to educate their children "in matters pertaining to sexuality and reproduction."

The head of delegation decried the "present practice of 'emergency contraception' and use of the RU 486 pill," and said: "These abortive practices, camouflaged as means of contraception, are clearly contrary to national legislative systems which grant legal protection and safeguards to life from the moment of conception. ... The Holy See continues to deplore recourse to sterilization by the exertion of various types of pressure on patients or by seeking to disguise this type of intervention."

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